Thanks, Wonderful Blogger Friends!

Well.... I'd like to thank you ALL for commeting on my last entry... I'm shocked at how many of you have to deal with SO MANY pregnant people in your friend groups and work. I know one couple in my company of 60-some employees who has trouble conceiving. Everyone else, no problem... As in, we have a father of 12, father of 8, another father of 8, father of 7, father of 5, and so on. Oh yeah, no fertility problems there. The good thing is, most of them work in the Illinois office, so apart from ultrasound/baby pictures and announcements, I am very shielded from it becauses I work alone in a home office. I ignore the "it's in the water" comments (how I've wanted to beg publicly for that water!).

The pregnancies that hurt the most are my close acquaintances/friends. And I told my husband, I watched all these women get pregnant with thier first or second born children spring '06 and now many of the moms with one baby are trying for number 2. I had a hard time then since we'd been TTC ~6 months, but now, this spring it'll be ~31 months. I just am not ready for that yet. I know SO MANY of you have walked through this. I only have 2 of those so far (friends pregnant with #1 & now #2 all when we were TCC before #1).... I love my friends and they are very kind to me. I am happy they don't have to experience the awful pain of IF. I'm glad to see their families grow and be so happy. But envy sneaks in and I just want it too. Yes, envy. Ugly, isn't it? And I don't want to be forgotten (which naturally happens). But I have to make myself stop comparing them to me. My life is different and I can't make it what it's not. I'm trying to love them, they're trying to love me, and we're in different seasons. I can't share all their motherhood joys while I'm in my time of pain, and vice versa. So I am going to have to keep pushing on, whether or not I'm pregnant when they all get their #2's.

Now, I would like to say I have incredible parents. When I was at the end of my rope earlier this week, I wrote them an email about my pain, my doubts, my feelings of dispair. And Dad & Mom got on the phone and called me, just to love me. Dad knows where I am. He has had deep, dark times of pain and confusion and one bad thing after another at seasons in his life. He told me that he can't offer me anything I haven't heard yet... That I will have to find this place so deep down inside of me, and find out truly what I believe. He said that these are questions my very life is hinged on... life or death type of questions. And he just struck such a chord with me.

C.S. Lewis is a writer I never tire of reading. He is logical, clear-headed, and has the ability to put into words the things we don't even know we have thought. One of his books, A Grief Obsered, was originally just a diary after his wife's untimely death. He wrestled with whether or not God was even good. Here's a quote:

“Bridge players tell me that there must be some money on the game, ‘or else people won’t take it seriously.’ Apparently it’s like that. Your bid – for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity – will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.”

That's what Dad was talking about. This is an experience in my life where I have to really discover what I believe. At one point in his struggles, Lewis said, "Not that I am in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all’, but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'" Yes! When I'm so tied up in my own pain and other's joy, it is a real question to grapple with!!!! I know the truth about God, but my circumstances and definitely my feelings are telling me it's all been a deception.

And yet, I just know, even in my pain, that I believe something different about God. I don't believe he tortures as a vivisectionist. I believe He is the good surgeon, gently cutting out something dreadful out of me. He is working for my good. Not because it even looks remotely like that, but because I have to choose whether to believe His word about Himself, or my feelings/temporal circumstances.

Ah how far I have to go.... But at least I know what I'm up against.